Is pitching further watered down? Steroids’ taking making a 21st-c. comeback? Word is, the balls have more spring. The so-called rabbit ball dates back at least to the early 1920s. The winding of the horsehide has been known to vary as a correlative of attendance.

October 4 will be the 60th (this once a magic single-season number, courtesy Babe Ruth in 1927, followed by Roger Maris’s assault on Ruth’s then-record in 1961) anniversary of Sputnik 1. Players today are competing with launches in their own way.

Aaron Judge, for example, a king-sized strikeout machine with the New York Yankees in 2016, is challenging Mark McGwire’s rookie record (49): that is, if Aaron is technically judged a rookie. He’s already hit one ~500 feet. The rate his ball travels, right off the bat, to the distant outfield and further, is measured as the fastest ever…I’m not sure how this metric, exit velocity, validates on an all-time basis.

Naturally enough, the US government itself and professional baseball at its highest level go way back to the institution of the reserve clause by the US Supreme Court in 1922. This gave owners an exemption from the 19th-century Sherman Antitrust Act. It was an Act of Collusion; players were indentured to their respective major-league teams. The beginning of the end, touched off by a teams’ trade in 1969, was the case of Curt Flood, rarely mentioned among players and figures who belong in the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

The Congressional Game is about to be played, as I (Evander) cobble this blog, in Nationals Park. D.C. was the long-time home of the storied Washington Senators. You’ve heard it: first in war, first in peace, and last in the American League.* Those Senators moved to Minnesota, and then there was a new Senators, a so-called expansion club, even worse than its namesake.

Everything the real senators and representatives, legislators all, might have learned about sportsmanship, in each phase of life, could have been picked up in Little League. (Another figure of politics, who knew a thing or two about unity, Helmut Kohl, died the same day. I hope this isn’t a bad sign.)

The ball-field match-up of Dems and GOP was devised 60 years “Before the Flood.” In the late 1950s House Speaker Sam Rayburn called a halt to the exhibition. (Maybe the cold war got to him.) Soon, the charitable orchestration resumed. One source says Republicans have won 42, the Democrats 39, with one declared a tie. Another source has the score 39 games to 39. Figures no one can agree. Depends on the source. Baseball, we all know, is never fake news.

You won’t be seeing this at a Major League game anymore. (Photo: Ross D. Franklin/AP)

In 1880, the National League changed the rules so that eight balls instead of nine were required for a walk. In 1884, the National League changed the rules so that six balls were required for a walk. In 1886, the American Association changed the rules so that six balls instead of seven were required for a walk; however, the National League changed the rules so that seven balls were required for a walk instead of six. In 1887, National League and American Association officials agreed to abide by some uniform rule changes and decreased the number of balls required for a walk to five. In 1889, the National League and the American Association decreased the number of balls required for a walk to four. In 2017, Major League Baseball approved a rule change allowing for a batter to be walked intentionally by having the defending bench signal to the home-plate umpire.

“The move was met with some controversy,” Wikipedia continues. Oh. I (Evander) have accepted the non-takeout slide at second base (and the end of the so-called neighborhood play) along with newish rules meant to eliminate bad-boy Pete Rose/Ty Cobb-style home-plate collisions. But this one of 2017 is a little pointless. If the idea is to speed up the MLB game, today’s intentional-walk signal will excise 14 seconds. It takes the fun out of hope against hope of seeing a wild pitch as part of the process. (Cf. the accompanying photo.)

Xander Jan Bogaerts about to catch the ball and apply the tag on Brett Michael Gardner: Brexit or not, here we come! (Photo: AP)

The Boston Heraldreports the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees plan to resume their classic rivalry via a series in London—in 2018. This follows the recent agreement reached by MLB, and is a further example of professional baseball “internationalizing” at the highest level. Hal Steinbrenner, principal owner of the Yankees, is central to the story.

The franchise of Feller, Score, and Thome: its fans wait till next year

Nicholas Frankovich asks if Cleveland Indians fans require a big-couch session with a group psychotherapist. It’s a reasonable question. The 1954 Indians still hold the modern record for regular-season winning percentage—till the nonexistent Law of Averages caught up with them versus the New York Giants. The Indians could not win a single game. In 1997, the Tribe came this close to a championship, but as in 2016 the seventh-game win proved elusive.

(It is worth noting that the mighty New York Yankees do not have anything approximating a stellar record in World Series going-the-distance seven games: lost in 2001, lost in 1964, lost in 1960, lost in 1955; only in 1958 did they come out, against the Milwaukee Braves, of a 3-to-1 hole: just as the 2016 Cubs returned from the dead. The Yankees are also the only postseason-baseball team to lose four straight after taking a three-to-nothing lead, which broke the Curse of the Bambino in 2004.)

The Chicago Cubs ball club will complete its makeover by removing the on-field bullpens: They adjusted the bleachers so that only the Bay Area teams will have pitchers warming up in foul territory. They had added lights. At least the ivy walls remain to remind anyone of “the lovable losers” and patsies of baseball.

The long-suffering fans of the Chicago Cubs will not hear “1908” anymore. They don’t need to hear “1969” or “Bartman” any longer either, just as Boston fans will not hear “1918” again. The Cubs stand athwart a history of frustration and atop the baseball world. They reign. The drought lasted forty years longer than the Indians’s. It is difficult to imagine Cleveland needing the biblical forty additional in the American League wilderness. 2056? Preposterously distant. Women and men will be playing ball on Mars and the moon by that time.

And so another baseball season has ended, and some part of me (Evander) has again died, psychologically, emotionally. In 2015, I could look forward to T20. No such luck in this most weird year.

Alex Rodriguez is released and leaves many questions. “At 18, I just wanted to make the team [Seattle Mariners]…a guy like me who’s been to hell and back.”

The baseball world has moved on.

Unless unforeseen circumstances (e.g., a rainout; another club hoping to catch lightning in a bottle in 2018, or by some arrangement even in 2017) prevail, Alex Rodriguez will not play major-league ball after August 12, when he is released by the New York Yankees.

Against a backdrop of what absorbs the rest of the sports world, the 2016 Summer Olympic Games—a spectacle that has its share of performance-enhancing scandals—the timing is typically questionable. Welcome to A-Rod Land. Tomorrow, 8/8, is midsummer. For unknown reasons, the makeshift Sunday-morning announcement could not be delayed for Meridian Monday.

Whether there’s a curtain call round the Green Monster in Boston this week, where the Yankees play, is a question. Maybe, aetat. 45, he’d seek to Simonize his profile by managing a national team—USA or Dominican Republic—in the 2020 Olympics. He has made no secret of a desire to own, or have controlling interest in, a major-league team.

No doubt Rodriguez is one of the most gifted athletes ever on a baseball field. His work of personal redemption continues.